middle east politics

Today Günter Grass - famous German Nobel literate - published a poem callled "Was gesagt werden muss (What has to be said)" about the situation in the middle east, talking straight about the hypocrisy of blaming Iran for allegedly building a nuke while Israel has them stockpiled, unchecked for...

In the Iranian nuke discussions some posters insinuate that Israel is to blame for hostilities between the two countries. A straight answer is never given for how these hostilities began. (As Orwell noted, liars rarely speak straight). Here's your opportunity: When did conflict between...

I'm interested in how much people think the region will change following the recent upheavals.... Just some general cynicisms: Bahrain and the other oil states - no real change (thanks to Saudi troops et al) Libya - notional changes with the Colonel remaining in power (i guess we'll wait to...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110123/ap_on_re_us/tunisia_spreading_protests first Tunisia and now possibly Yemen. any chance that Saudi Arabia could follow? I support any and all attempts to bring down dictatorships, but only if there is a democratic and secular movement waiting in the...

Usually I would hesitate to start a thread on Israel, as it would just reinforce the embarrassing level of obsession on display in this forum. (Just look at the first few pages of this subfoum.) But this story is just too good to pass up. One of Maariv main correspondent's, Ben Kaspit, a...

United States' Special Envoy George Mitchell is going to be kick-starting negotiations during the coming week or so. Arab League Oversight Committee has voted to approve the process commencing. There will be four months of back-and-forth tripartite US-mediated talks. The goal is to get to...

Gaza strip (and to much lesser extent the West Bank) have become little bantustans run for the benefit of Israel but paid for by the International Community. Given for an entity like Gaza it is impossible to grow any where enough of its own food, and impossible to trade normally or develop a...

http://www.newsweek.com/id/171261/page/1 Fortunately, there is a strategy that has proved effective in the past and could serve again today: "offshore balancing." It's less ambitious than President Bush's grand plan to spread democracy throughout the Middle East, but it would be much better at...

From Yahoo and Reuters comes a story that struck me as laugh-out-loud funny: The reaction of many potential voters is that many of them have never heard of Gere. Who is this guy? What does he want? Why is he telling us what to do? One guy's reaction was this: "We don't need the Americans'...

I read this article some time ago and it resonated. Read here how Moslem leaders handle their Faluja's: http://www.mafhoum.com/press2/63P58.htm Read the whole thing, it is instructive. The difficulty that we have over there is that we are attempting to bring effete western approaches to...